An exploration of pizza in and around Rochester, NY, one pizzeria at a time

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Main Street Pizzeria, Brockport

I've done a post before about Main Street Pizza in Brockport, but it seemed like a good time for an update. For one thing, I ran across a recent review that really trashed Main Street for having "strayed so far from its original NYC roots & recipe [that] it barely even resembles NYC style pizza any more." Wow. Really?
Second, I noticed that Main Street's website has a link to my earlier blog review, which gave them an A-minus. I'm OK with that, but I figured if they're using my blog to promote themselves, I should check back and see if they're still as good as before.
Unlike my last visit, when I just got a slice, this time I got a full pie, specifically an "extra large" (18 inch) New York style pie.
Contrary to what the aforementioned reviewer said, this did resemble NYC style pizza. It had a thin crust, which had some light charring on the underside. The bottom displayed some surface cracks, but it remained pliable enough to fold.
There were some differences from last time, though. Whereas before I wrote that the "sauce was applied lightly" and the "cheese was a tad on the thick side," here that was reversed. This was a sauce-dominated pizza. It wasn't doused with sauce, but there was a fair amount of it, and it had an assertive, complex flavor, with notes of both tomatoey sweetness and acidity, with some herbs in the background. The sauce had a medium-thick consistency, neither runny nor dried out. The pizza in general also had a certain black-peppery, spicy aftertaste, though I couldn't see any obvious source of that. My guess, however, is that it came from the sauce.In contrast, the cheese was rather lightly applied, with a number of bare spots showing, and a thin layer of cheese where it was present. The cheese didn't have the greatest texture either - it was not smooth, creamy or stringy, but simply congealed, with a texture somewhat like that of melted plastic. I wondered if it was part-skim cheese, which I think doesn't melt as nicely as the full-fat stuff.
Consistent with the crisp crust, this pizza had a nice bready edge, whidch was formed into a medium-wide lip. It had a crunchy exterior and chewy interior.
Main Street also offers "traditional style" pizza, which I take to mean thicker crust. I may try one sometime, but it's hard for me to pass up a decent NY-style pizza when it's available.
And this is decent NY-style pizza. Not flawless, but not bad. On the plus side, I liked the crust, which struck the right balance between crispness, pliability and chewiness. On the minus side, I wasn't so crazy about the cheese this time around. I don't usually like a lot of cheese on my pizza, but this one seemed a tad skimpy. Worse than that, the cheese simply didn't add much, either in terms of flavor or texture.
That leaves the sauce, which really took center stage here. I liked it well enough, but some people may not (like my wife, for instance, who thought this pizza was too tomatoey). Maybe it was just this one pizza, or maybe as a cost-cutting move, they're going lighter on the cheese and adding a little more sauce to compensate. The problem with that is that it tends to throw things out of balance. Cheese, sauce and crust should work in harmony together, but here the sauce predominated.
Again, I didn't mind it much - my biggest complaint was the cheese itself - but I can see where some people might be less than thrilled with this pizza, especially if you like a cheesy pizza.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that personally, I still like Main Street's NY-style pizza, though this one wasn't quite as good, I think, as the slice I had last time. So I'll bump it down a notch, to a B+.
Main Street Pizza, 13 Main St., Brockport 637-8760
Mon. - Sat. 11 a.m. - 10 p.m., Sun. noon - 10 p.m.

1 comment:

I've eaten there for years and under all 4 owners and I have to completely agree with the Yelp review. "Its NY pizza for people who have never been to NY." When they opened in 1993 and were called Big Apple Pizza and run by 2 Brooklyn boys this pizza was heaven. Now it's cheap sauce, cheap cheese, and a crust that isn't a true NYC style. Merely rolling a dough thin does not make it NYC style. It needs to be crispy, yet soft. At Main St when you fold a slice it either snaps in half from being burnt or it falls apart into one giant gob of goo from being under cooked. Drive down the road to Cams in Spencerport if you want to see NYC crust done properly.

Furthermore, how does a black bottomed slice as shown in your pic still get a B+?

Ratings Guide

A: great; one of the best this area has to offerB: pretty good; not top-notch, but definitely good, and better than averageC: OK; nothing special, but it’ll do; typical for our areaD: edible; if you’ve already paid for it, you might as well eat itF: downright bad; toss it and get something else